Christine
by Tremere
Summary: (Was Feast of the Father) A story I came up with about a Nosferatu in the Dark Ages. Please R/R as it rocks!
1. Feast of the Father

Feast of the Father

I am from the ground. I know what it is to rot, but I do not rot. I thirst for her blood. 

The blood carries the spirit. It is flavored by the soul, and hers is pure and virtuous. 

Its beauty would kill me, for I am death and vileness, so the drink must be diluted. I must corrupt this pristine goddess. 

She is the Princess Christine. Her skin is alabaster perfection. Her breathtaking brown eyes are clean and clear. Her hair, long, abundant, and brown, is a silken marvel it would be an ecstasy to run my ugly hand through. But I can only endure wickedness, and could never touch her as she is. 

I have one of their servants under my power. He has gotten a potent drug from me, created with the ancient arts of alchemy. A simple potion, with a simple effect. To cloud the mind. And, as the servant has placed this drug in her wine, Princess Christine, at dinner, swoons. 

"The princess is unwell!" 

"Let her retire. She has reason to be exhausted. She too much applies herself to her good works." 

Christine is carried up to her room. Her bedchamber servant helps her to undress. Now the gorgeous creature lies in bed in a simple white gown. 

I am a shadow beneath her window. I enter her maidservant's mind and tell the simple creature to leave the room. She rises from her chair and departs. 

And now the drug rouses Christine from her swoon, but her mind is very clouded and she is happy and confused. Drunken, one would say. She is sixteen, and chaste, and has never been intoxicated. 

Her beautiful eyes are glazed over and giddy in expression. She grins strangely and squirms distractedly under her sheet. She tears and kicks the sheet away and sighs, hands behind her head, and stares through the high ceiling. 

"What is happening?" she murmurs. "What was I just thinking?" She does not know, and she sighs again, a mixture of regret and pleasure in the exhalation. 

I can endure no more, and besides, the time has come for the next phase. I have ascended to the balcony outside her window, and have been watching my Christine through the glass. And now I enter through the window, and am in her bedchamber for the very first time. 

Even now, her blood would burn me to cinders, or it would were I to take it in my mouth and drink in the ultimate, intimate consummation. But I shall not. First she must be weakened, darkened, damned. Then she will be mine.

I calm her as I approach. Her eyes watch me vacantly, seeing but not seeing. Someone comes towards her, is all she knows, and cannot produce the least association for that sliver of knowledge. 

It is as well. I would offend and revolt any eyes which shine at the sight of pretty things. Clean room. Sullied very greatly by myself, but I'm little more than a phantom. Christine watches me. I lift one pale hand. Pointed claws glint in the dim room. With one quick stab I open a pinprick on my finger.

The blood is red. Red and heady. It is my blood, and it shall damn her.

Spots--red spots--dripping through the air over her bed. They please her. She is not alarmed. They are like flowers grown and bloomed instantaneously, but they are less flowers than polyps. Little swelling crimson balls. Christine stares at them as if hypnotized. 

When the first scarlet drop falls and splashes on her forehead, she laughs. The strangeness has evolved beyond the ethereal to the corporeal. What a strange game this is! She laughs, the shadow above her grins and nods.

Christine tilts and turns her head, desiring, although only half-aware of it, for the fluid to run into her mouth. The drops cascade through the air. One drips down slowly, sparkling as it falls to her delicate face. Dancing over her pretty lip, the mischievous drop spills onto her waiting tongue. 

It arrives with a thrilling, hair-raising shock, surprisingly cool in her mouth. Tentacles of electricity blast from the drop as it passes down her throat and enters her body. All of her being is flooded with alertness. It does not restore her from the lethargy of the narcotic, but combines with it, taking her even further from herself. 

The drop sits inside her like a marble, like a bright candle, an alien presence so overbearing it would be an agony, if it did not feel so good. 

Another drop falls. She twists to catch it. Her bright lips wide open as her delicate tongue arcs for the red candy. The drop is caught, and swallowed without hesitation. Its effect is just as chillingly electric. She gasps, her body tensing. The feeling is twice now what it was. 

It is raining blood in Christine's room. The sight would not be believed, but the only witness writhes in her bed, half out of her mind. And this gorgeous and pure aristocrat, who has, up until this point, primarily derived pleasure from music, games, an attractive pair of eyes, and a kind gesture, now thrusts herself towards each falling drop like a circus beast. 

Then it has been enough. With but a flicker of thought I close the wound. The rain stops, the blood flows no more. The princess moans discontentedly, and sits bolt upright in bed. Her eyes are wild, but she bites her lip, like a child disappointed at a game's end. 

I sit at her bedside and lean towards her. I reach, as to caress, and gently rest my right hand on her neck. Our eyes meet and lock. Hers are lost in mine. I bend her head. I look at the soft white neck. The hunger calls to me as fangs glide from within my mouth.

She quietly gasps as I suck blood from her throat. Again my claws flash in the darkness. My wrist is opened. A shallow gash glistening with crimson fruits. I offer it to her.A mere drip, like the penis's pre-ejaculatory fluid, is all that is needed to make her understand. Christine licks the flesh of my wound and is rewarded. She closes her soft lips around it and sucks. 

To give and to take are an ecstasy. It is the greatest physical pleasure there is. I see that Christine thinks so too. The vacancy in her lovely brown eyes has given way to more interesting things. At first, surprise, then pleasure, then hunger. It is like this with the blood. Even as it is drunk, one burns with hunger for more. But the supply is limitless, and so, so long as there is blood, there is great happiness. Christine's eyes glaze over like a dog's with lust. 

The pulsing heat of her fills my mouth. Warms me and flows through my body. She suckles at my wrist, sweet delicate slurps. Ahhhhthis--this feeding and nurturing--is very, very good. I think, with this, it is better to give. Graspers, thieves, and gluttons, know not what they miss. To give, to lose, can be a great ecstasy. 

But nothing is more sublime than witnessing what is happening to the princess. A pleasure which goes beyond the visceral. It is so pleasing to the soul to experience this. With my hand on her throat I can feel her gulping down my blood eagerly. Nobody, no matter how transported he is by drugs and drink, could be unaware of it when a monster has him by the throat. She knows an inhuman hand is defiling her, but she doesn't care. 

Her mind and her body belong to me now. She is mine. Forever.

The power that she ingests now speaks in her brain and her veins with the most authority. In addition to the intoxication, pleasure, gradually, but undeniably, a transformation is occurring. It grows...a hunger in her eyes,

My blood warms her everywhere but in her heart. It sings in her head, but it is not a song little girls or nuns know. A feral light begins to glow in her eyes. Gleaming red light shining across my pale white skin.

It is done now. She is mine. I no longer suck and there is no more for Christine. I remove my hand from her feeble grasp and pull my mouth from her throat. Blood trickles from her lips and runs down her chin. She licks her lips. Her eyes are not her own. Perhaps they're mine, or the devil's. 

There are two ugly marks on her neck where my fangs have been. I lean in, resting one hand on her shoulder, and lick the sores, like, if you will, an animal grooming her young. The profanities are gone--washed away by my saliva--and her neck is lovely again. 

Christine rises from her bed. She does not look at me, her mind is elsewhere. Inside her a hunger has been created. A hunger like none she has ever known. A hunger that drives her to madness. Ah Christine....now you shall be reborn into the night. Reborn to be with me.

She crosses the room towards the door, which she opens. She pauses before the threshold, crosses her arms before her, and pulls her gown off over her head. The light glistens off her flowing hair. Off her naked back. She balls up the gown, and to my surprise, wipes the blood off her face with it, and then casts the soiled thing almost disdainfully back into the room. Then she steps out into the hallway of the sleeping castle. Her door remains ajar. 

Those of the house who aren't asleep cannot see her. I have given her this power, and I help her. Their minds are nothing to me. The naked princess walks down silent corridors past guards and staff, whose minds I have entered, saying, "You do not see her. You do not hear her." Inside her head I drive her. Drive her to where she must go.

Is she not like an assassin? I'm reminded of those lines from the revered play: 

Withered Murder, 

Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf, 

Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, 

With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design 

Moves like a ghost.

Surely, though, the drinking of Christine's coppery nectar has intoxicated me. She is no murderess. She carries no dagger to wreak a waking nightmare at dawn. Is it not so? Perhaps, though, she carries the dagger within. 

She passes down a most familiar and beloved length of hall, which concludes with an exceedingly impressive closed door. It all has a different meaning to her now. She lays a pretty hand upon the door, touching it briefly with affection. And then her hand descends to the handle, and Christine silently opens the door. She enters. 

Although the guards cannot see or hear her, I think it best that they depart. And more marionettes faithfully respond. They too move like ghosts and do not disturb the sleeper as they noiselessly exit. 

Before her, in the darkened room, a vast, canopied bed. The king, sensing her presence perhaps, awakens. He sees a feminine silhouette, and, being king, immediately realizes that it is the silhouette of an unclothed woman. 

"Who's there?" the old man asks hoarsely. "Lina?" (his concubine) "What are you doing there? Light a taper." 

She sets the room on fire with light. But he has not seen her face. Admiring the youthful and voluptuous body, he realizes it is not Lina's. Lina is very beautiful, but this is not she. This girl, he thinks, with gathering certainty, makes the other look like a toad. 

"Stop," he gently chides. "You'll blind me. With whom , child, have I the pleasure?" 

She turns, grinning lovingly. 

"Daddy" 

"What?!" He recoils. This is his daughter, naked in his bedroom like a strumpet! It's a dream! It cannot be! 

"Christine! What's the meaning of this? Why do you appear before your father like this? Return to your room at once!" 

She smiles wantonly and dances towards him seductively. Her hair is disheveled. Her creamy white body is breathtaking. Her father stares at her full breasts and dark pubic thatch with alarm. 

"Sweetheart," the king groans, much amazed. He fights to avert his eyes. "You're unwell." 

Calling in a servant is out of the question. He has no desire for his daughter and himself to be caught in this compromising position. But what must he do? 

She sits down on the bed next to him. Her shapely thigh next to his. She touches his chest and pouts and looks at him with teasing mock concern. "Have I made you unhappy, Daddy?" she asks. 

He is trembling, a prisoner in his own bed. "Very," the king nearly whimpers. "Very unhappy." 

"I'll make you happy, please daddy." She moves towards him. Her soft arms wrap around him tightly. He knows not what to do, what to say. He tries to push her off, but she is stronger then seems possible. She wraps him tightly in her arms. "Daddy....kiss me..."

She gently caresses his back even as her arms entrap him. He looks about for his guards, but they are gone. She exhales a hot gust onto his neck. She opens her mouth wide, revealing fangs, and buries them in her father's throat. 

He tenses and fumbles and flails about limply, but Christine's fanged grip hasn't a prayer of being broken. The king is falling plunging into a cold dungeon of anxiety and despair. Christine ceases to feed, and it is she who hurls him onto his back so that he can see what has happened. 

His daughter is on top of him. Her face is contorted into a mask of diabolical aggression. Her flesh grows pale and spotty. Her hair darkens and becomes mangled. Black nails twist from knobby fingers. Her stench grows putrid and stale. She is fanged like a tiger, and her lips and her chin and her teeth are drenched with his bright red blood.

Terrible laughter freezes him. A voice from across the room says, "Christine." The demoness slides off of him, leaves the bed, and comes. The king, clutching his bleeding throat, turns to see who it is. 

He gives a start and shivers to see such a monstrous being. But now he stares. "You!" 

Christine leans into my embrace, for I am her master, and now she is what I am. 

And her father's expression is the richest pleasure I have known this night. For it is not merely a princess, but a kingdom which I have brought low. My laughter as I consider this makes thunder sound like the chortle of an infant. Christine shakes in my grasp. Her mind trying to come to terms with that she has done. I laugh again, no Christine, no. My power holds you yet. Tonight, and forever.

"Finish him Christine. I am your father now." She nods and advances again. The king trembles in fear as he staggers from his bed and falls weakly to his face.Her fangs flash in the darkness as she bends over him. I feel the hunger grow in me as I watch her feast. But that is well. The castle is yet full, the night is not over yet.

THE END 


	2. The Killing Fields

The Killing Fields

I am from the ground. I know what it is to rot, but I do not rot. 

I drink the blood of the land, I consume it for myself.

The castle of her father has become a nightmare world for my dear Christine. She often wanders about the dark and empty halls remembering the night of blood that christened her *birth* to me. Her eyes seem distant as she recalls the screams and sees again the horrors that she performed for me.

I allow her to do so freely...I am not so evil as to rob from others their dreams. I sit upon a bloodstained throne and hold in my clawed grasp the cold metal circlet of her father's crown. I watch her live her dreams and think of a poem.

Yet if hope has flown away,

In a night or in a day.

In a vision or in none.

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem,

Is but a dream within a dream.

My poor dear Christine takes little comfort in my words. She stares at herself in a mirror. Riviluts of crimson flowing down her pallid and hollow cheeks. Her clawed and gnarled hands pulling at once flaxen, now bedraggled golden tresses.

The villagers now make small symbols of warding when they walk past the castle. They avert their eyes and seek not to ask what strange pall has fallen over their lord. I take his face now, it pleases me to do as I please in his name. His good name. His just name.

A name he used to justify hunting and destroying my brood. A name that justified his actions as he dragged them through the streets and to the pyres built by the villagers. They too had felt just as they had prodded and abused my poor children. He had issued a heroic speech as their bodies burst into flames and their crys echoed into the heavens, carried aloft by the smoke and embers.

Their cries had awakened me from my slumber.

He had seen the alter in their lair when his brave knights had assaulted my sleeping children. He had seen my face carved in the stone. He had known that reprisal would come for him due to his dark deeds. He thought his faith would protect him. He thought God would stand with him. He thought himself safe behind his ivory walls of stone! Was he safe? Was his daughter safe? Was his legacy safe?

I think not.

Now his family is mine. His house is mine. His name and legacy are mine! I shall destroy that legacy, as I shall destroy all memory of him. That is my verdict upon his house. That is the price of my children's blood.

Thus when the new one comes I smile. It is but a flicker of my will and Christine comes too. Her face goes from sad to cold deadness as I watch her. Her mind has retreated into herself, trying to escape the reality she knows I shall make her live. Dream within a dream, it is still yours to live Christine.

We move through the dark night unhindered. I am lord of this land, and all creatures great and small now it within their heart of hearts. The barred shutters and locked doors of the small villages nestled in the shadow of the castle pass in a blur. Tonight I seek not their blood. Their is another.

The wind blows through the trees as he awakens. His name is Christian. It means Christ's son. The name makes me laugh.

He is a Crusader, a valiant knight in the service of God. He has returned from the Crusades a rich man. Rich on his rightly won spoils from the hethens that he butchered and murdered as he raped and pillaged their land. He slept well tonight. Some would call it the sleep of the just.

But he is awake now, woken by a silent whisper I send to his mind. His eyes flicker open, his body grows tense as he feels the danger about him.

He had come home with a band of friends and fellow warriors. They had been celebrated wherever they went as heroes. But Christian was not interested in that. He was interested in returning again to his home. He was interested in meeting again his bride.

He had held her image close to his heart these many long years in the field. He would draw forth a small painting around the campfires and regale his friends with tales of her beauty and kindness.

But dark tidings had come to him as he traveled through unfamilier lands he had once called home. Hushed tales of dread happenings in the castle of his lord. Muttered words about the mysterious deaths that plauged the land.

But he had pushed on, he would not be filled with fear of his own home. He swore he would return to his lord and help vanquish the darkness that gripped the heart of the land.

He swore he would again clasp his beloved and beautiful Christine to his bosom.

He was warned the lord had grown dread, that Christine had lost her joy of life. That they had withdrawn into their castle. That they saw no one, that they cared for nothing.

The young knight did not listen. The Christ's son pushed on, he and his men riding hard for the castle.

They might have made it before night. They might have disturbed our rest. But I willed it to not be so. Thick mists rose from the ground to blind their vision. Wild dogs and wolves harried and attacked their horses. The men grew tired, they agreed to make camp in an apple orchard for the night.

Christian and Christine had played within the orchard as children. They had run amongst the falling blossoms. He had climbed a tree and plucked the apple of her choosing from the highest branch. She had laughed and bit into it. The sweet juices flowing over her lips and dribbling down her beautiful chin. He had grinned as he watched her, the sun dappling in his wavy golden hair.

How wonderful a moment that must have been. How they must have loved this field. It is thus perfect for what I do plan.

Christian slides open his tent and steps into the chill and misty night. He holds his sword in one hand, the heavy blade resting easily in his confident grasp. He looks at the bedrolls of his men.

They are empty.

Christian's bright eyes narrow. His once bronzed skin grows paler as he looks for his men. But oh how pale it shall be soon enough. I reach out and lightly push one of the men, then I allow myself to again fade into the shadows.

A dull low creak echos eerily through the misty field. Christian grabs up one of the watch lanterns. He walks through the camp. He calls out for his men.

"Hark! Whereart thou soldiers of God?"

Where indeed. Soldiers of God indeed. The poor wretch has yet to realize...

"Men! Can anybody hear me?"

I can hear him. But I doubt that knowledge would please him overmuch. There is a distant cawing and fluttering of wings. Christian ducks slightly as the crows flap through the trees over his head.

He walks slower now. Away from his camp and into the tall rows of apple trees. He hears the creaking sound and moves towards it, lantern held high in one hand, sword ready in the other.

Then he finds them.

How like fruit they are. Rich and full of red sweetness to fill my belly. How like fruit I made them. Hanging them upon the trees to decorate my garden.

Christian's eyes are wide as he looks about him. His men and friends hang from the trees, their hands bound behind them, their necks wrapped tightly in nooses. Their dead and vacant eyes look at him as they shift slightly in the stale wind that rustles the dead leaves. Their pallid faces and sightless gazes hold him transfixed.

He likes not my garden...I think that I shall never see, a poem lovely as a tree...it is a poem. No poem is as lovely as these trees. They are my trees. They are my victims.

Christian's head moves back and forth numbly, his mouth hangs agape, his arms slump to his sides. Twenty men, twenty fruits. Who would have thought it could be done so silently?

"No."

His voice is weak, he shakes his head.

"No!

He grits his teeth, glowers at the shapes.

"NO!"

Now it is time. He is ready and I let her know.

Christian spots the pale flash of white in the distant fog. He moves towards it with purpose, his sword held tight and ready. The pale figure appears again to his right. Then behind him. He can hear it rustle the grass. It always beckons to him as he rushes towards it.

Then it is gone again.

He pushes and shoves aside the hanging bodies as he rushes past the trees. The bodies sway, the ropes creak. His feet pound across the damp dirt and grass. The dead and dry leaves of the trees rain around him as he rushes back and forth through the mist. 

It swirls around him as he falls to his knees. His eyes are mad. His lantern dropped during his wild chase. Long flickering shadows cast through the dead branches of the trees. Around him the slowly swinging bodies glare down at him. The soft creak of the ropes fills his mind.

Then she is there, walking towards him slowly. Her white dress blowing lightly around her young and beautiful frame.

It is Christine, it is his love.

He looks at her pale face, at her gleaming eyes. Somewhere within him he knows the fear of the unnatural. But I hold him quiet with my mind. She reaches down and pulls him to his feet. Her delicately thin arms encircle him. Her soft billowing dress caresses his skin as she holds him.

He wished to hold her, it was his desire. Do not think me cruel, I shall grant him his final wish.

He looks down as her face seems to melt. He screams as he looks at the graying rotting monster beneath! Her grip is like iron, he struggles to use his sword but it is too late, he is trapped!

She laughs and bites into his throat. His sweet juices flowing over her lips and dribbling down her deformed chin. His golden hair fails to dance in the sunlight, it simply clings to his dying face as he gasps for air. 

He sinks to the mist covered ground. He lies there in the field, around him his men share the same look he now has on his own face.

I step forward and clutch her to me. She thinks of resisting only for a moment, and then my lips press to hers as we share the remains of his blood.

Yes Christine, I am your father now. And tonight, tonight you became my daughter.

THE END 


End file.
